FROM JOSEPH FARAH'S G2 BULLETIN

See which power is building its military

Expansion, not repair, now has become the goal

F. Michael Maloof, senior staff writer for national security affairs for WND and G2Bulletin, is a former senior security policy analyst in the office of the secretary of defense, and is author of "A Nation Forsaken."

This means that he and his Army General Staff chief, Gen. Valeryi Gerasimov, will be looking to ways to achieve advances in Russian military performance levels.

This new perspective is due to the uncertainties arising from the Arab Spring and the military’s experiences in the 2008 Russian invasion of Georgia.

Gerasimov believes that the distinction between war and peace have blurred, given recent events in the Middle East and North Africa. The Arab Spring has brought about foreign intervention, chaos, humanitarian disasters and civil war, Gerasimov has pointed out.

In a recent speech, Gerasimov said that experiences stemming from the Arab Spring don’t constitute war in the traditional sense but the unrest and chaos that ensues could become the “typical war” of this century.

He said that this type of conflict creates devastating social, economic and political results that, in effect, equate to a war.

In dealing with this form of modern conflict, Gerasimov said greater emphasis needs to be placed on intelligence and dominance of the “information space.”

This new form of conflict, he said, is occurring through remote contactless war in which strategic, operational and tactical levels – offensive and defensive actions – become less distinguishable.

As a result, more of an asymmetrical, or unconventional, warfare will become more commonplace. The growing concern for a power is being dragged into a conflict that it doesn’t want.

In pointing to the way the United States has conducted limited warfare since the 2003 U.S.-Iraq conflict and then in Libya, Gerasimov believes that the U.S. approach of C4ISR is the way to go for increasing Russian military capability.

The Russian military will be looking to more of a non-nuclear approach than the way the armed forces are now taking. Gerasimov has the backing of a number of Russian strategists who advocate more of a non-nuclear deterrence.

Such a non-nuclear deterrence will include high-precision, long-range conventional weapons such as the U.S. now uses in its drone campaign against terrorist locations.

Remote warfare will be the preference – what some call Sixth Generation Warfare – that will rely more on information and communications systems and the ability to hit targets with great precision from half a world away, as the U.S. does now in its drone warfare.

Advocates want this type of warfare integrated into Russia’s military doctrine. It is a form of network-centric capabilities.

This is a type of warfare developed by the U.S. Department of Defense in the 1990s. It calls for a robust networked military force capable of information sharing.

Because Russia doesn’t have a non-nuclear deterrence policy doctrine, Russian strategic thinkers believe the approach of C4ISR network-centric warfare offers the only viable conventional option to meet future international crises.

Moscow’s defense plan remains secret but analysts believe the Russian military will be going the way Gerasimov outlined in his recent speech to increase its conventional capability through C2ISR within the next five years.

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